Acme Packets, one of the growth leaders in the network equipment space as far as the Street was concerned, did a surprise pre-announce of a less-than-expected quarter. Supporters of the company have rallied around the notion that this is somehow just a transient blip. Yet the company told investors that the shortfall came from a…
Is the Cloud the Operator’s Secret Monetization Weapon?
Well, it’s 2012 and everyone is going to be talking about what kind of year it will be, or what kind of year 2011 was. It’s inevitable at this time of year, and the fact that there’s nothing much being announced at this point in time is no small reason for the recaps or future-tellings….
Google and Apple TV, RIM and Microsoft Phones
It’s the last workday of 2011 and everyone seems to be doing a retrospective, but I’m not going to do that! What’s the point of blogging if you rake up the past anyway? There are more stories today about both Apple’s and Google’s possible plans in the TV space. One of the popular ones (for…
Is Microsoft Teaching Network Vendors a Lesson?
Microsoft continues to have problems with Windows Phone; the Street is reporting that the first releases by Nokia will be delayed a quarter according to a leaked roadmap. As I noted yesterday, both Apple iOS and Google Android devices had record activations for the holiday, so it’s hard not to say that Microsoft’s strategy with…
Android Could Slip on its Ice Cream Sandwich
With a record number of activations for iOS and Android devices, it’s pretty clear that the mobile appliance is here to stay. Given that Microsoft has been little more than a kid with nose pressed to the candy store window in the holiday race, I think it’s also likely that the giant software firm has…
Why Wi-Space Isn’t White Space!
One of the things trying hard to be a fad these days is the “super-WiFi” that could utilize the TV broadcast spectrum white space. The technology, regulatory position, and usage of this spectrum is still very much an open question, in my view, and there may be no more difficult question than whether it’s going…
Is Akamai/Cotendo a Sign of a New CDN Age?
Akamai has won a reputed battle with AT&T and Juniper over mobile-content-optimizer Cotendo, a company that gets described as a “cloud” player by the media in keeping with the current notion that anything that’s not cloud is not newsworthy. This is interesting, not for the “cloud” aspect but for the fact that it speaks volumes…
Is Verizon’s Outage a Symptom of Service-Layer Tension?
Verizon’s network suffered another of those large-scale outages, and there’s no official word on just what created the problem. One story I’ve heard is that it’s the same last time, which is an IMS-based signaling system overload. If true, the problem illustrates one of the major challenges for both vendors and operators. IMS has been…
Reading Oracle’s Results
Tech giant Oracle reported, and it wasn’t pretty. For the first time in a very long time, Oracle disappointed in both performance and guidance. Pretty much every aspect of its business was weaker than the Street expected, but the hardware guidance (off next year 4% to 14%) was considered dreadful by many. This is one…
What Now: For AT&T and for the Cloud
AT&T has decided to drop its attempt to acquire T-Mobile, citing regulatory opposition. Some on the Street are putting a good face on the deal’s breakup, saying that it will encourage AT&T to spend more on infrastructure and help vendors. Alcatel-Lucent is up in early trading in Europe as an expected recipient of all this…